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The democrats and the "human shields" myth.

Article Excerpt
Israelis from across the political spectrum, emboldened by the interim report from the government's Winograd Commission, which investigated Israel's ill-fated assault on Lebanon, are expressing regrets over last summer's conflict with their northern neighbor. Uproar over the way a relatively minor border incident managed to escalate into a full-scale war is leading to demands for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's resignation and other top government officials are under pressure or stepping down.

Meanwhile, in the United States Congress, leaders of both parties are not only still defending Israel's decision to go to war, but its conduct of the war as well.

During the five weeks of fighting, 119 Israeli soldiers and 43 Israeli civilians were killed. It was the Lebanese who suffered the most, however. Massive Israeli bombardments took the lives of more than 1,100 people, the vast majority of whom were innocent civilians, and caused more than $3.5 billion in damage to the country's civilian infrastructure and widespread environmental damage.

Moral and Legal Responsibility

Yet Congress continues to justify last summer's widespread attacks on civilian targets by the U.S.-supplied Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) by claiming that Hezbollah used the Lebanese civilian population as "human shields," thereby seeking to protect America's closest Middle East ally from its moral and legal responsibility for its war crimes.

For example, on April 25, the House of Representatives passed by a near-unanimous voice vote a resolution (H. Res. 125) claiming that "throughout the summer of 2006 conflict with the State of Israel, Hezbollah forces utilized human shields to protect themselves from counterattacks by Israeli forces." In defense of the Bush administration's controversial backing of Israel's 35-day assault on Lebanon, the Democratic-led House cited President George W. Bush's claim that "Hezbollah terrorists used Lebanese civilians as human shields, sacrificing the innocent in an effort to protect themselves from Israeli response" and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's assertion that "'Hezbollah and its sponsors have brought devastation upon the people of Lebanon, ... exploiting them as human shields."

In an effort to make the case that it was Lebanese, not the Israeli armed forces, who were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Lebanese civilians, the resolution goes as far as claiming that "the majority of civilian casualties of that conflict might have been avoided and civilian lives saved had Hezbollah not employed this tactic."

Similarly, as Israeli peace activists began protests against their country's attacks on civilian targets in Lebanon last summer, the House of Representatives passed a resolution (H. Res. 921) defending the Israeli government's controversial policies, praising "Israel's longstanding...

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